“That’s her. She clears houses for a living, takes away all the stuff no one knows what to do with, and a lot of it ends back at ours. You should see her room. She’s great, a bit wild; dances when she can’t get to sleep, like a restless ghost; brings back strange bedfellows. Then there’s Erika and Doc. They’ve got the attic room.” He smiled faintly. “They’re loud.”

“I heard. And there’s Jan the mathematician.”

“You’ve been paying attention. Jan’s not really part of the house. He’s a temporary lodger. Liam needed the money. He keeps to himself. He runs and stays in his room and keeps his own food in a Tupperware.”

“But Liam owned the house?”

“That’s right. Or he borrowed the money to buy it, if that’s the same thing. So I guess we’re all lodgers really. It’s never felt like that. We all pay different rents and help out with the renovation. Some more than others,” he added, and pointed at himself. “Master builder. It was a wreck when Liam bought it; once water gets into a building, it goes pretty fast. Still is a wreck mostly, but it could be amazing. Or at least . . .” He grimaced. “It could have been. I’ll show you the rest of it next time you come.”

They’d reached the bus stop. Vin surprised her by laying a heavy hand on her shoulder and staring into her face, as if she was a puzzle he was going to solve.

“Cut us some slack,” he said. “We’re all in shock.”

Why are you telling me this? Jude thought. I don’t care.

“Maybe you can help us,” he said.

“I can’t.”

Vin dropped his hand and stepped back. “We’ll see.”

Twenty-One

Jude made herself a curried parsnip soup and ate it listening to a podcast so that she wouldn’t have to listen to her own thoughts. The Tottenham flat was cold, silent and smelled of damp. She wasn’t used to being alone. She had never lived by herself: she had always shared with friends and in the last year it had been her and Nat. She rarely spent an evening alone, and when she did it was a kind of luxury. It didn’t feel like that now.

A group of friends were meeting at a pub in Islington later. She thought about joining them, drowning her sorrows. But outside it was cold, dark, wet. She could hear rain dripping from the gutters. She shrank from being with people who were still in their old lives: working, dating, laughing, making plans. She didn’t want their curiosity or their kindness.

She made up her mind and stood decisively. She had to do this at once: the longer she waited, the harder it would get.